pointless ramble

25 June, 2005 - 6:48am — milee13

I'm debating whether or not I should rejoin YEAH club next year(basically a different name for gsa) I need clubs for college and cookie club, the only thing i militantly attend, doesn't look that great.
I think i'm definitely going for spanish club and probably german too because almost all of the current members are graduating and the frau is doing me a huge favor by letting me have advanced study second semester...and i want to work on allusions the literary magazine...but all of this crap isn't going to leave me time to do my service learning hours or work.....oh well

Anyway about yeah club, i quit this year because i didn't like their focus and i guess i just didn't really feel comfortable there, pretty sad as it's supposed to be supportive and all that. All they really did was have little party get together things and they didn't do much by way of homophobia education , which is what they are supposed to be about... It was really cool my freshman year, they had an awesome president who is now involved with the queer student union out at the university near here, and i wish it was still like that, they used to ocme into classes and talk and everything and they didn't do that at all this year so i kind of lost interest. I would like to get involved again next year, i think that leadership may be changing hands so it could be more interesting....

I guess i'll just have to wait and see if it actually improves anyway, there isn't really anything i can do to help it along....

Comments

Hey, I was wondering if I could just mooch a little info off of you. You mentioned that in your freshman year your school's GSA was really good- could you describe some of the things that made them really good (and some of the things that made the new group really bad)- My friends and I just started a GSA at my school, and we are looking for any good activies or projects that we could do during the year- especially some big event to kick of the year with. Anyway, if you feel giving me a few suggestions I'd really appreciate it!
Thanks!- ninabird

They actually had representatives come into classrooms to talk about campus safety, just not in regards to treating glbtq students equally but they tried to broaden the picture by taking stand up surveys about whether or not people felt safe on campus. how many people had been accosted about their sexuality, race, gender, etc, and the people that had been stood up, people just seemed more aware of there presence than they are now.I think a lot of it had to do with the fact that they were just such an amazing group of people.
It's actually called yeah which stands for Youth Educating Against Homophobia, so it's probably a bit different than what you're doing.
I think a lot of what made them good was that they got out and made people aware of their presence and didn't tolerate bad mouthing, they were very outspoken.

And that year there were actually glbtq students in the group instead of just supporters, not that supporters are bad, of course the more support the better, supporters are very good.
This year it's basically just supporters and YEAH isn't their main club focus (I'm selfish they should only focus on the club...) The current president is involved in several other clubs and so even though she is the president of this particualr group she doesn't put it first. They don't boost as much awareness because they don't seem to care as much as the others.

The best i can suggest is to make yourself known, don't hide away behind one lunch meeting a week, if you want a good gsa be devoted to the cause.

I think that if my schools group doesn't start to change it's going to fall apart and that's why I've pretty much decided to go back next year so that i can express what i think of the situation.

With the stand up surveys it was nice because a lot of people did stand up and others were made more aware of how many people were affected by the issues in the school.

My sophomore year i was in arkansas and they don't have anything, I brought them day of silence and got in a lot of trouble, especially after i wrote an editorial about my experiences and how i felt about the way i had been treated, not by my classmates, they actually supported what i did, but rather by my teachers. so when i came back here for my junior year i think i was disappointed that the YEAH club had seemingly begun to deteriorate so much just when i needed them.

You can also do a search on gsa's some of them have websites and you might be able to find info on starting your own and good ways to recruit members...recruit, tricky word there.

Best of luck to you on this.

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